Phillips Front Page News Again And I Don’t Care
On a morning where the big story of the day should be the Yankees coming within one win of yet another World Series appearance the New York Post decided to run a front page story on former Mets general manager Steve Phillips. Phillips, apparently, had an affair with an intern that didn’t go quite as planned. Where have I heard that before?
Anyway, I have to question why anybody in the world cares about this story and why it’s considered front page news. I can understand if you’re a 24-hour news television station and it’s a slow news day and you need to cover something. (I’m talking to you, CNN, and your silly coverage of the balloon boy story.) But should I care about this story?
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Our Long Nightmare is Over: Takahashi Released
The Mets made a bold move in their offseason shakeup of the team after a disastrous 2009 season by releasing Ken Takahashi. The 40 year old Japanese lefty had just completed his rookie season. He pitched 27.1 innings allowing 23 hits, while striking out 23 and allowing 14 walks. His ERA was 2.96. Clearly this is a move in the right direction as the Mets could not tolerate a pitcher who struck out more batters than he walked. I mean, opposing batters only hit .235 against him. How could the Mets allow such a performance to besmirch what the organization is all about: bad fundamentals and high priced free agents.
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About Yankees Fans
I got into a mild argument the other day with a relative who is a football Giants fan. The argument was centered a round a comment he made when I mentioned how upset I was on Sunday night when the Jets-Bills game went on so long that my DVR stopped recording before the game was over despite my having set the DVR to record an hour extra. It’s a philosophy I have when recording live events to record for extra time and an hour has always been more than enough for football games. Even those that went into overtime like the Jets-Bill game did. But this time the DVR stopped taping during overtime so I couldn’t see the finishing score that humiliated the Jets.
My relative replied to my comment that I was a gluten for punishment. The line revolved around the point that the Giants are 5-1 despite a humiliating loss to the New Orleans Saints this week. But it goes much deeper than that. He’s a bit younger than me and was indoctrinated into football fandom during the Bill Parcells era. Though the Giants have had some bad years since then they’ve usually been a better than average team. The Jets, on the other hand, well, there’s a reason we continue to say “same old Jets”.
As a Giants fan who has seen his team win the Super Bowl three times in his lifetime (and appear one more time) he’s grown accustomed to a certain level of football being played by his team. He thinks winning is an entitlement and not necessarily a precious commodity that must be earned.
After watching last night’s Yankees-Angels game (game 3 of the ALCS) and seeing Yankees fans reactions to the 5-5, 11-inning loss it is apparent to me now more than ever that Yankees fans harbor the same attitude toward their team that this relative harbors toward the Yankees. I guess their entitled to think think this way to a certain extent. Their team has won the World Series 26 times and has the right to a certain amount of swagger as a result. But the fans treat winning as a right and can’t appreciate it.
Let’s look at what is regarded as the reason the game was lost last night. In the bottom of the 11th inning manager Joe Girardi took right handed relief pitcher David Robertson out of the game despite Robertson getting the two batters he faced out in favor of another righty, Alfredo Aceves. Aceves promptly allowed two hits the second of which knocked in the Angels winning run. The move was based on the type of pitchers the two are and the types of hitters they’d be facing. As a manager you rely on your scouting reports to help you make these kinds of decisions and Girardi felt that based on the reports Aceves was the better pitcher to face the next hitter. But in this instance the move failed.
If I were a Yankee fan you could bet that I’d be upset about the loss. It was a chance to go up 3-0 against an Angels team that has been very tough for the Yankees to beat. I can’t blame Yankees fans for being critical of the pitching change and upset at the loss. However the vehemence I’ve seen from them is inexcusable. Everything from “this wouldn’t happen if George Steinbrenner was still in charge” to “I can’t believe Joe Girardi still has a job”.
All I can say to our crosstown brothers and sisters is: get a grip! Your team just won 6 games in a row (5 of which were in the post season). They were bound to lose a game. They’re still up 2-1 in the series. If you were real fans you’d be excited that they still had a lead in the series with their top pitcher slated to start game 4 instead of griping about the only game the team has lost in over 2 weeks.
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Thoughts About the Coaching Staff
Coaching is a part of the game that is hard for a fan to really understand than one may think. Pitching, hitting and third base coaches are a bit more visible than others since you can usually see the fruits of their labor in the teams stats. But unless you watch a team more closely and know a bit more about the game than the average fan you’re not going to notice how good or bad a job the bench coach is doing. Or the first base coach. Or the bullpen coach.
That being said it’s hard for me to say why the Mets have fired bench coach Sandy Alomar Sr. Granted that I have not followed the team very closely since August but based on what I’ve seen of Alomar over the years it’s hard to see why the team would think he’s not an asset to the coaching staff.
The Mets have also fired Luis Alicea, generic first base coach. Big woop.
Staying on for 2010 will be pitching coach Dan Warthen, whose starting staff was decimated by injuries. It’s hard to say if Warthen is to blame for this year’s pitching troubles but I have to think that he had some input regarding the re-signing of Oliver Perez. That alone should be enough of an indictment to merit a re-assignment.
Also retained was hitting coach Howard Johnson. I don’t think HoJo was as much to blame for the lack of power this year as the DL revolving door and the new stadium were. I think he has something to prove next year.
Third base coach Razor Shines was also retained. His energy and relationship with manager Jerry Manuel, who, it appears, will also be back, make him an early favorite to fill Alomar’s bench coach role.
Bullpen coach Randy Niemann will also be back. No word on training and medical staff changes.
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Reyes To Have Surgery; Minaya To Blame?
The sad state of the Mets play as well as their injury list lead me to go dormant for a while but I saw a story this morning that infuriated me so that I needed to come out of hiding and discuss.
It appears that Jose Reyes, who’s been on the DL since May, will be having surgery after tearing a hamstring while running the other day. This new injury is in addition to the tendon he’s been rehabbing for months (literally) which, by the way, will probably also be operated on.
Let’s review the teams training and medical staff’s strategy for dealing with Reyes this year. Let him keep playing after the initial injury so he can aggravate it to the point where he’s gone for the season. Allow him to rehab the injury without surgery and monitor the rehab in such a way that he suffers not one but two new injuries along the way. Then recommend surgery for two of the three injuries. Am I missing something here?
How does a guy who is under the watchful eyes of the teams medical and training staffs suffer two injuries while rehabbing another? The only answer is incompetence. The question is where the incompetence is. Is it with the training staff whose programs should have the players in better shape? Is it with the medical staff who is not treating injuries seriously enough? Is it someone else along the reporting lines who downplays the seriousness of injuries to the decision makers? Or is it the decision makers for disregarding the the warnings?
I’m not sure what the answer to the question is but what happened this season has been building since Omar Minaya became general manager of the team. Every year there have been a handful of situations where injured players continued to play despite the obvious seriousness of their injuries. They’d continue to play until the injury got so bad that they missed significantly more time than if they had been put on the DL in the first place.
Earlier we could have blamed Willie Randolph for this anomaly (and some did) but it continued to occur after he was fired. Look no further than John Maine‘s situation last season for proof of that. If the blame for this was on the manager then surely it would have improved after Randolph’s ouster. As much as you’d like to put it on Jerry Manuel’s shoulders this is one situation I don’t think you can blame him for.
I think it’s Minaya who is to blame for the injury situation. Up until this season it hasn’t had a major affect on the teams finish. The collapses of the last two years should be put on the managers, coaches and players. But this year the injury issues cost the Mets the season. Not just part of the season but the whole darn thing. And Minaya must be held accountable by the Wilpons. Whether it’s firing him, taking some of the medical decisions out of his hands or some other solution the Wilpons owe it to the fans as well as whoever it is that can afford to buy tickets at CitiField (I sure can’t) to address this situation so that next season doesn’t get lost the way this one did.
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Today’s Lineup Vs. Diamondbacks (8/12/2009)
| 19 | Cory Sullivan | CF | ||||
| 3 | Alex Cora | 2b | ||||
| 5 | David Wright | 3B | ||||
| 10 | Gary Sheffield | RF | ||||
| 12 | Jeff Francoeur | RF | ||||
| 17 | Fernando Tatis | 1B | ||||
| 9 | Omir Santos | C | ||||
| 11 | Anderson Hernandez | SS | ||||
| 46 | Oliver Perez | P | ||||
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Pregame Note
Doug Davis, tonight’s scheduled starter for the Diamondbacks, has allowed just four runs in his last 19 innings pitched over his past three starts. He’ll be facing Mike Pelfrey who is making his first start since the birth of his first child who he named after the venue for tonight’s game, Chase Field.
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My Take on Baseball’s PED Issue
I was talking with a friend of mine over the weekend and the subject of David Ortiz and PEDs came up. This friend is a Yankee fan and he tried to spin the story as a situation that taints the Red Sox World Series win that broke the curse of the bambino. (Though I say that he’s a Yankee fan I also must add the disclaimer that many baseball fans who don’t root for the Yankees have felt the same way.) A year ago I may have agreed with this statement but I’ve grown to be jaded by reports of players using PEDs.
The fact is that just because we now know certain players performances were enhanced it doesn’t mean that actual game outcomes have been affected in a large way. I’m becoming more and more of the opinion that for every player we know who was (is?) juicing there are probably two that we don’t know about. And there is probably an equal number of players on each team that are jucing (or close to it). What this means is that while individual statistics have been inflated, the proliferation of players under the influence even out team statistics and game outcomes were probably not affected very much.
With the reports of people on the 2003 juicing list leaking out in dribs and drabs I will not be surprised if any of my favorite players are on the list. Do I care? Certainly. Do I think it really affect the game? Only in the PR sense.
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Pitching Matchups Vs. Diamondbacks
Here are the scheduled pitching matchups for this week’s 3 game set against the Arizona Diamondbacks:
Monday – Mike Pelfrey (8-7, 4.75) vs. Doug Davis (6-10, 3.67), 9:40 p.m., SNY.
Tuesday – Livan Hernandez (7-6, 5.08) vs. Max Scherzer (6-6, 4.01), 9:40 p.m., SNY.
Wednesday – Oliver Perez (2-3, 6.38) vs. Jon Garland (6-10, 4.33), 3:40 p.m., SNY.
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This Date in Mets History
This date in Mets history according to the Associated Press (via Yahoo Sports:
2006—New York Mets center fielder Carlos Beltran tied a major league record with his third grand slam of the month in a 9-6 victory over Atlanta. Beltran became the ninth player in major league history to hit three grand slams in a calendar month.
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